- Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Flight departs at 12:21 am (14:21 GMT Friday) and is due to land in Beijing at 6:30am (2230 GMT Friday) the same day.

- On board the Boeing 777-200ER are 227 passengers and 12 crew.

- Airline loses contact with plane between 1-2 hours after takeoff

- No distress signal is given, and weather is clear at the time.

- Missing plane last has contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.

- Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.

- Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from website’s tracking records a minute later while still climbing.

- Malaysia and Vietnam conduct joint search and rescue operation. China says dispatches two maritime rescue ships to the South China Sea to help in search and rescue. US also sends ships and plane to help.

- Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact.

- Airline says flight was carrying 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians and six Australians. Manifest shows other nationalities as being from: India, France, United States, New Zealand, Ukraine, Canada, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.

- Radar indicates flight may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing.

- Malaysian rescue teams expand their search to the country's western coast.

- Malaysian authorities pore over CCTV footage and question immigration officers and guards at Kuala Lumpur's international airport, concerned that a security breach may be connected to incident.

- Interpol says at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers, and it is "examining additional suspect passports".

- Malaysia’s state news agency quotes Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying the passengers using the stolen European passports were of Asian appearance.

- Investigators narrow focus of inquiries on possibility plane disintegrated in mid-flight, according to a source who is involved in the investigations in Malaysia.

- Vietnamese navy plane spots an object suspected of belonging to the airliners. Too dark to be certain the object is part of plane. More aircraft to be dispatched to investigate the site, in waters off southern Vietnam, in the morning.